The Playlist: Lana Del Rey Finds Love in a Hopeless Place

Lana Del Rey's new single is "Love."CreditChad Batka for The New York Times

Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos — and anything else that strikes them as intriguing. You can listen to this playlist on Spotify here. Like this Playlist? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com, and sign up for our Louder newsletter here.

Lana Del Rey, ‘Love’

After her eerie, luxuriant, string-laden 2015 album, “Honeymoon,” Lana Del Rey moves back toward more standard pop forms with “Love,” a verse-chorus-verse ballad built on four fundamental girl-group chords. The chorus rises inexorably, step by step, to linger over the word “love”; the production floats in a vast, open ambience, and Ms. Del Rey, as usual, takes all the time she wants. Her retro construction is utterly self-conscious, identifying with her audience from a distance: “Look at you kids with your vintage music,” it begins. The song affirms the classic pop panacea, young love, as a corrective to aimlessness, pressure and uncertainty, first for the kids and then for herself: “It doesn’t matter if I’m not enough/For the future or the things to come,” she sings. And she alludes, in the bridge,to the pure California reassurance of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry, Baby.” In the video clip, vintage vehicles, tailfins and all, carry young lovers to another planet: a new environment for old-fashioned romantic verities. JON PARELES

Ride, ‘Charm Assault’

The first new song in two decades from the early-1990s shoegaze band Ride — dissolved in 1996, reunited to tour in 2015 — is pugnacious rather than contemplative, aimed at the current state of politics. “It looks so ugly/As your lies begin to unfurl,” Andy Bell sings. The old shoegaze sound returns in the verses, with guitar counterpoint swathed in reverb, but the intro and chorus punch out syncopated power chords, banging hard for attention in the here and now. J.P.

Calvin Harris feat. Frank Ocean and Migos, ‘Slide’

The slow way this unlikely aggregation unfolds is appealing — first comes lush 1970s piano, then a voice pitched up beyond chipmunk to somewhere near Young Thug, then a shift into warm Daft Punk disco-funk. By the time Mr. Ocean begins singing — a little moody, a little sassy — the caress is in full flow. Next Quavo and Offset of Migos arrive, Quavo uncharacteristically direct, Offset uncharacteristically limber. All of these elements shouldn’t quite cohere, but the relentless silkiness of the production creates common cause. JON CARAMANICA

Calling Nicki Minaj a great tactical rapper makes her sound un-fun, but one of the great thrills of hearing Ms. Minaj rap — which doesn’t happen quite as often as it once did — is hearing the way she injects whimsy and flexibility into unexpectedly formal arrangements. She manages to respect the beat, and also challenge it. Though she often sounds as if she can’t be bothered, respect for craft clearly keeps her motivated. On “Make Love,” a song where Gucci Mane is at his dexterous best — “You think he colder than me?/You more bipolar than me” — Ms. Minaj leans in to her cold sense of humor:

I rep Queens where they listen to a bunch of NasI’m a yes and these bitches is a bunch of nahsTrying to win a gunfight with a bunch of knivesI win, get off the bench and give a bunch of fives

Most of her verse is dedicated to insulting unnamed antagonists, one of her favored modes, doing so while stretching out syllables, jumping up an octave, or taking “two bars off just to laugh.” On “Swalla,” a cheerfully lecherous new Jason Derulo song, she’s more straightforward in her delivery. Over a kiddie-carnival dancehall beat, she sticks with a stern, hard-edged delivery, keeping insistent, testy tempo while the rest of the song shrieks in the background. J.C.

The Chainsmokers and Coldplay, ‘Something Just Like This’

Anyone who contends that this pairing is illogical, or even just ill advised, hasn’t been paying close attention. Both Coldplay and the Chainsmokers specialize in the grand gauche gesture, and this collaboration sounds so natural it could pass for a song by either one of them on their own. Coldplay’s Chris Martin sings with leaden imagery and big-picture ambition, and the Chainsmokers deliver a dopey kick that’s a direct callback to “Closer,” the hit they had with Halsey last year. In this meeting of the plain, no one has to compromise. J.C.

Ingrid Andress, ‘The Stranger’

An elegant evocation of corrosive loneliness, “The Stranger” is the debut single from Ingrid Andress, a young singer with mild country inclinations but greater loyalty to the female singer-songwriters of the 1990s. “You play the stranger, I’ll play the girl at the bar,” she sings, full of resignation, to a lover who’s grown distant. Ms. Andress occasionally tips over into melodrama — she was a member of the a cappella group Delilah, which competed on the reality competition show “The Sing-Off” — but mostly her voice is steady, calm, alive. J.C.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, ‘Down (Is Where I Want to Be)’

Mounting exasperation is a specialty of Alec Ounsworth, the songwriter and wavery-voiced singer of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. “Down (Is Where I Want to Be),” from the band’s new album, “The Tourist,” vociferously combines the off-kilter and the aggrieved. At first he wanders through dissonant pings and plinks of guitar and bass; then a walloping post-punk beat arrives to propel him through thoughts of “humanity, catastrophe, all right humanity insanity,” sudden key changes and a Queenlike vocal-harmony chorus announcing the realization, “I’m getting nowhere.” Maybe not, but he’s venting magnificently. J.P.

Zedd feat. Alessia Cara, ‘Stay’

Alessia Cara is a magnificent young singer who sings idea-filled soul with oodles of heart, and a song like “Stay” underscores why dance-music collaborations can be so deadening for singers with signature styles. When Ms. Cara is let loose, her singing is loose, sultry and full of intriguing shades, but singing over a square beat like this demands a kind of rigor that’s at odds with vocal inventiveness. That Zedd’s production is unimaginative, flat and derivative doesn’t help. J.C.

Jon Pareles has been The Times's chief pop music critic since 1988. A musician, he has played in rock bands, jazz groups and classical ensembles. He majored in music at Yale University. @JonPareles

Jon Caramanica is a pop music critic for The Times and the host of the Popcast. He also writes the men's Critical Shopper column for Styles. He previously worked for Vibe magazine, and has written for the Village Voice, Spin, XXL and more. @joncaramanica